Croquis Pop 2

April 17, 2009

Now, the good thing about this volume is that the story is getting a bit more developed. Instead of the short monster-of-the-day-type stories from before, one story fills this volume and actually runs into volume three. It’s a good story too, where an old assistant shows up at the studio and Da-Il winds up sharing a room with him and somehow getting sucked into his past in the alternate dimension of the story. This story also has a lot less of the weird fighting and stuff from the first volume. I liked that it backed off the weird stuff, just because it’s probably better that I have some time to digest all that stuff, and it’s better that it comes slowly in nice stories like this rather than all at once in shorter stories.

On the other hand, there’s no effort to explain absolutely anything here. We’ve still got an older woman and a younger woman that look like they are controlling things for Da-Il, we’ve still got Mu-Huk running around (kept from Da-Il this time by, uh, Judas, who’s stronger because he’s famous), and, well, Mu-Huk isn’t running around, actually, because he’s sealed in a box in the night sky. I don’t know. While I don’t want this stuff all at once, it would be nice if I could have at least a little peek at what some of it means.

Plus… well, it’s very much a shounen manga. Friends stand up for friends, they go for what they believe in, and the fight scenes between Mu-Huk and Judas are pretty standard fare. Aside from the bizarre and mysterious Dead Zone mechanic, and the fact that it’s got a weird meta thing going on where the artist Ho Go is drawing a comic starring Da-Il doing all the things he’s doing in the Dead Zone… well, actually, that sounds pretty awesome, and it is. The problem is the generic flavor of the actual meat of the series. Perhaps it will shake itself of this in a couple more volumes as things become more clear, though.

The end to the volume is pretty epic and kind of sad, though, and it does leave off in a pretty awesome place for volume 3.

11/9/2014

I think... I think I got burned out.

I did read some manga while I was taking a break, and I have around 30 reviews written but not posted. I've started reading more regularly this past week. No promises, but here's hoping I pick the hobby back up again. Nothing has made me as happy as reading manga does.

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